


October 16th, 1994

by ohhtheperiphery



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhtheperiphery/pseuds/ohhtheperiphery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s October the 16th, 1994, a waxing gibbous moon, and it makes perfect sense for Sirius Black to drop out of the sky on the back of a hippogriff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	October 16th, 1994

It’s October, and the earth smells wonderful. Orange, dusky, and secretive, and Remus doesn’t know how to explain how those things are good, how those things are magic in another sense, a beneath-the-skin-and-tingling sense, but they are. They’re smells but they’re also memories, and they’re electric under his skin. It’s half past six and the sun’s already started to set, casting long, yellow-golden shadows across the field. He sits outside of the house, or shack, whatever the word for it is, he isn’t sure, but one thing it isn’t is a home. It is a place, a place where he’s staying—and surrounding it is a seemingly endless field, with the trees of a forest far off in the distance, swaying in the wind. The weather has turned just cool enough that he has to pull a jacket around him; not quite cold enough yet for his sweaters. And that feels right, too, that temperature, prickling at his skin, at some spot on the base of his spine.

He isn’t surprised when he looks up and sees them come tumbling out from behind a cloud.

It’s October the 16th, 1994, a waxing gibbous moon, and it makes perfect sense for Sirius Black to drop out of the sky on the back of a hippogriff. He looks as if he’s about to fall over, but he doesn’t. Remus wonders what he himself must look like, if he looks like he might topple over at any moment, too. He stares numbly at Sirius and the wind sweeps across the field in a way that is entirely unfair in its melodrama, or at the very least unfairly maudlin, and he hears a voice say, “Would you like some tea?” He almost laughs at it, because it’s a stupid voice saying such a stupid thing, but then he realizes that the voice belongs to him, it’s his, he said that. Sirius is staring back at him out of eyes that are too hollow and too distant and he says _yes_ and it carries, loudly, like a burn, across the wind and the spaces between them.

Somewhere high in the east, the moon is rising.

 

*

  
“James and Lily have been dead for thirteen years,” Sirius says it like it’s simple, like he’s said something as easy and normal and relaxed as, “Nice place you’ve got here.” Which, it isn’t, Remus thinks, though it’s entirely the wrong thing to think. About his...his place. That he’s got, here. That Sirius is sitting in. On an old, falling-apart couch, to be exact, holding a cup of tea between bony, trembling hands.

Remus wants them to stop shaking like that. He’s going to drop the tea, spill it all over the floor—

It so very much doesn’t matter it nearly makes him sick. He takes a sip from his own tea instead, and says, “I know,” because he does, and because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Thirteen years this Halloween,” Sirius continues on, like a ghost. Like old Professor Binns—Sirius might have well gotten up one day from Azkaban and walked out, and kept on walking, and never stopped to blink or really open his eyes and take account of his surroundings. Just kept on walking, and talking, and existing, but not really there, not quite fully back. An echo, a shell, not quite corporeal. A giddy instinct inside of Remus’s gut wants to reach out, to stop those stupid shaking hands by surrounding them with his own. They’re so thin, so small; Remus imagines that his own hands would easily engulf them.

He’s grown, he realizes. Since Sirius went away. He’s gotten taller, filled out in the shoulders. And Sirius, Sirius has shrunk.

“Do you realize,” Sirius is saying, “James was—eleven, when I met him. He’d been alive for ten years. And he only had ten years left to live. Eleven years old and half his life over.” Sirius is whispering, and his eyes are wide and staring straight ahead.

“You think about these sorts of things,” the shell of Sirius sitting on his decrepit couch murmurs, “in Azkaban, I guess.”

 _I’m so sorry_ , some memory of a boy inside Remus is crying, and that memory reaches out and touches the side of the cheek that belongs to the ghost that was once Sirius Black. And the ghost turns towards it, collapses inwards, and is held, and their lips find one another, and the memory cradles the ghost until he falls asleep, murmuring lies like _It’s all right, it’s all finally going to be all right_ against his long, soft hair.

“I’m going to go make up the guest bedroom for you; you must be tired.” Remus hears it again, that stupid _fucking_ voice that is his. Sirius doesn’t say anything and thankfully doesn’t look at Remus, but his hands do jerk ever so slightly, the porcelain of the cup and saucer rattling just a bit louder in that moment.

“Yes,” says Remus, this time to himself. He’s down the hallway and in the room he’s been using for a bedroom before he slams a fist into the wall, gasping and blinking back tears which he can blame on that. On the broken skin and blood on his knuckles, because that is real, that is physical pain, not the ache of ghost limbs and memories. No, the ache welling up from his fist is a defined haunting which he can bandage, a kind of pain he can follow back definitively to the source.

 

*

  
There is glass between Remus and the world. He had felt it back at Hogwarts. Harry was standing in his office, fighting off the Dementor—the Boggart, but. All the same. Harry was looking at him, was saying that he heard them, he heard his parents being killed—

Remus is sixteen, and James is laughing at something he has said. He had been upset—something to do with Lily, inevitably, but it’s lost, hazy now in the fogged recesses of memory. He had come to talk to Remus about it, because Sirius was inevitably being a total git and wouldn’t bother to listen much less say anything that wasn’t a complaint about James’s infatuation with Evans. And, Remus knew, Sirius probably had a point. But Remus wasn’t Sirius, and he had comforted and advised James as best he could, without the mocking and exasperation that Sirius would have shown in his place.

“You’re a good man, Moony,” James is saying, slapping Remus appreciatively across the back.

“I try,” Remus replies dryly.

—It’s James and Lily’s wedding and Sirius was the best man, of course. Remus stands at his side, not quite awkwardly, at the reception, when James appears, grabs his arm, and then pulls him forward in a hug.

“I never thanked you,” he’s saying into Remus’s ear.

“What for?” Remus manages in surprise.

“For being you,” James says, pulls away enough to look him in the eye. “For being Moony. For being Remus. For being my other best friend.”

Sirius is close enough that Remus knows he can hear, knows he’s listening. He reaches blindly behind him and—Sirius’s hand is there, clasping back at Remus’s grasp. Remus pulls him forward. They stand in a small circle, and Remus wonders what they must look like from the outside. Another part of him wonders with a sudden, sharp pang, where Peter is. It is oddly silenced when Sirius leans forward, the side of his head resting against Remus’s, one of James’s hands clasped on each of their arms.

This is, Remus thinks with something close to a shiver, some form of love. It probably doesn’t matter which kind. It isn’t something that needs to be defined, not in words, not like that.

Lily appears, radiant and beautiful, linking her arms through James’s, and leaning up to press a gentle kiss against the side of Remus’s temple. “James’s boys,” she laughs, and then James is laughing too, and they go spiraling away, leaving Remus standing with his hand still clasped tightly in Sirius’s and he isn’t entirely sure what’s happened. It only lasted a moment—a tiny, vertiginous moment that felt like a thousand moments, in a lifetime that opens up and looms before him. It felt almost religious, almost sacred.

When he looks at Sirius, he finds his face unreadable and distant, and the warmth in his stomach is immediately chilled.

—when Voldemort killed, when Voldemort killed them, Harry. Harry Potter is standing in front of him. James and Lily are holding a baby, and James is the one about to cry, rather than Lily, Remus hears Sirius making some joke about that and. It’s just, he’s just so tiny, and bald, and Remus wonders if he’ll have red hair someday—

Remus wants to put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Wants to reach out and embrace him, to hold him and cry against him and wring from him some semblance of a life that was not lived; a life Harry never lived, and James never lived, and Lily, and Sirius, and himself, too. A life Remus didn’t live, never got to see to fruition, but oh, he’s seeing more than James and Lily have, now, standing in front of him, with James’s wild hair and Lily’s imploring eyes and all he wants is to tell Harry, but not with words. He wants Harry to have those great, trembling, awe-inspiring moments, and those stupid, tiny, mundane moments. Moments that say, “You were born out of love and you are part of love, and part of something bigger, a past, another life, a family.”

But there is glass between Remus and the world, and when he lifts his hand he immediately recoils, as if burnt by a past and a future; a past that haunts him for existing and a future that haunts him because it never will.

He needs James, he thinks dully. He needs James to reach out and pull him in, and Sirius close by his side; a safe place, a warm place, a place of love and brothers and light. But instead all he has is glass, separating himself from everyone on the other side, and he tells Harry that he thinks that’s enough, that’s good enough for today.

 

*

  
Remus wakes up in the night and can’t fall back asleep.

He misses Hogwarts; he misses Harry and he misses James and he misses—Sirius is in the other room. There was—had that been a crash, he’d heard? Was that what had woken him up?

Remus leaps to his feet and down the short hallway—it isn’t very far—pushing open the door gently. He mentally kicks himself for not knocking not even three seconds later. And then he mentally kicks himself for that thought, too, for worrying about _propriety_ in all the wrong moments. His heart twinges noticeably in his chest, an actual, physical pain, and he tries not to think about that; instead pushes the door far enough so he can stick his face in the room.

“Sirius?” he says the name very quietly. There is a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. He isn’t entirely sure what for, but that doesn’t prevent it from existing.

“Sorry,” a voice calls softly back to him through the darkness. Sirius’s voice, but it sounds so different, out of place, out of time.

“Are you—” He nearly says _all right_ before stopping himself. The other half of the sentence is lost to the night. He can see, anyway; the moon is nearly full and illuminates the room from the window, and his eyes have always been particularly well-suited for the dark. Sirius is sitting up in the middle of the bed, staring up at him.

“I must have knocked it over in my sleep,” Sirius explains, and it is only at these words that Remus even notices the lamp lying on the floor. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up—”

“Oh, no, no, it’s all right, really.” Remus waves Sirius’s attempt to climb out of the bed aside, sweeping down to retrieve the fallen lamp. He bites his lip, glancing around the room, anything to avoid looking back at Sirius.

Something about the sight of Sirius on the bed had made him ache all the more.

“Here,” he says, giving up and opting to just set the lamp on the floor, in the far corner of the room. “I suppose you won’t really be needing it now, anyway, right?”

“Right,” says Sirius quietly. Remus doesn’t turn around to face him.

“Right,” he echoes helplessly. “I suppose that’s...that.” He turns toward the door, wondering what in hell he thinks he’s doing, standing here and making a fool of himself, as if Sirius is a small child, calling out to a parent, afraid of the dark—

“Remus?”

“Yes?” He brings himself to turn, finally, and Sirius is staring at him, eyes wide and alert in the darkness.

“Would you...would you mind just...” Sirius voice trails off and he breaks his gaze, glancing nervously out the window instead. Oh, how that nervousness hurts something inside of Remus’s chest just a little bit further. Sirius’s hands twitch in his lap.

“Yes?” Remus repeats, moving to break the stalemate he fears is building up between them. He walks forward and sits down on the edge of the bed, not as close to Sirius as he could, but close enough.

Something in Sirius’s shoulders relaxes. He moves one of his hands in an awkward, halting motion, towards Remus’s arm. Remus hopes he makes the right decision by taking the initiative to reach forward, then, clasping Sirius’s fingers tightly between his own.

Sirius sighs, relaxes even further at the gesture, and then almost seems to deflate. He leans forward and rests his head against Remus’s shoulder. “Are you—do you. Do you want me to leave?” he asks very quietly.

“What?” Remus is taken aback. “No, of course I don’t.”

“I thought...I might be imposing on you. I probably shouldn’t have come. I—”

“No, I—” Remus hates his voice for nearly breaking, “I just thought. It’s been a very long time, Sirius.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

Sirius pulls the rest of his body over, curling up against Remus’s side with his head still resting against his shoulder. “I want you to stay,” he says, so Remus does.

 

*

  
Remus wakes up in the night and can’t fall back asleep.

He thinks he hears a noise, and then he stares at the dark ceiling for what could be a few minutes or several hours.

It doesn’t matter, he decides, somewhere in-between. It was probably just a dream.

He rolls over and finally goes back to sleep sometime in the early hours of morning, when he can feel the moon slipping low and exhausted on the horizon.

 

*

  
Sirius sweeps out of the sky and Remus is there. Remus is waiting, like they both knew he always would be. And when Sirius collapses against his arms, Remus feels something inside of him swell like light, like love. Lost and then found.

He kisses Sirius, then, and Sirius kisses him back and somehow they end up inside on a bed and they make up for so much lost time, holding and touching each other in turn, learning the shape of new bodies, of new landscapes. Remus takes Sirius into his mouth and Sirius buries his hands in Remus’s hair and his voice breaks high and foreign and taut and strange, but he tastes just the same. Remus touches himself and moans with his mouth around Sirius’s cock, and Sirius calls him Moony, and besides the decade and counting gap between them and the vestiges of who they once were, everything is perfect.

Yes, Remus thinks. That’s how it might go.

 

*

  
It isn’t painful, not usually. It’s fine. Sirius never quite defines them as a couple, not in those words, but he doesn’t have to. Remus is content. Remus is more than content—he’s happy.

He wakes in the middle of the night held in Sirius’s arms, Sirius’s breath gentle and regulated against his forehead.

Sirius is paranoid, but then, they all are. Some days he disappears off somewhere; Remus doesn’t ask when he can manage not to, because it’s only fair. It’s war and it’s difficult, and Sirius can’t tell him everything. He understands that. Whether he can’t tell him because it’s war or because he’s Sirius, it doesn’t matter. He understands, even—especially—when he doesn’t.

One evening Sirius returns after having visited Peter, and Remus feels a bit guilty for not having gone along, although he hadn’t been invited, anyway. Sirius seems less tight, less full of a nervous energy. It’s good, Remus thinks. He runs a hand along the blades of Sirius’s shoulders, halting gently against the small of his back.

A week later, when he gets the owl about James and Lily and Peter, he sits in the kitchen for several hours on end and stares at it.

It doesn’t matter how many times he reads it; the words just don’t make any sense.

 

*

  
It is October 16th, 1994. Yes. That’s the day. That feels right. Something is ripe in the air. Some slight dip in the pressure of the altitude; a shift in the wind. It could go either way, like flipping a coin. Remus takes a sip of coffee as the sun rises, feels the moon in his elbows. The light has an edge of secrets to it, a slant of almost cutting hope. Perhaps today will be the day. The future webs outwards from it, like trembling fingers.  



End file.
